Honestly, I have no idea where to go for help on this. This subreddit had been cathartic for me so at the very least maybe writing this out will help.
I’ve been working at a crypto exchange for the last year and a half. We are the US branch of a China based company, which happens to have several sister brands involved. It’s a convoluted mess but I wanted the opportunity to escape a bad job and originally thought I had career development opportunities. Ironically, this company is worse than my last and I’ve got a lot of baggage to unpack now that I’ve escaped the abuse.
When I joined I was given stock options – normal in the tech industry. I didn’t think much of it until a coworker pointed out that his layer reviewed the options agreement and was advised it was shady but not entirely unreasonable. I had already signed the paperwork at this point since I was rather uninformed and wanted the paycheck more than the long term opportunity of equity.
Few months ago a bunch of my coworkers stated bailing. All for good reasons (benefits stripped, abusing leadership, 24/7 on-call burnout, escaping being the fall person for illegal shit) and I made my plan to escape too. I heard a bunch of people got buybacks for their options. Odd because no one had exercised their options (meaning bought them) because HR and Legal kept saying they were working on a new plan so no one could make a purchase yet. So a few ex-employees got a decent payout and I felt confident that if a new plan didn’t hit by the time I was exiting, I’d also get a little boost. The company has a history of being weird and controlling so I figured a payout was way better than fighting to keep the equity.
Then, a few days ago, the company announces the new equity plan. 4 days before my last day. New plan converts everything to RSUs and that sounds amazing at first – but there are big strings attached. Now the bit that bothers me the most is that if you have vested shares, but then you quit your shares have a timer on them now. Usually with RSUs, in a public company, once you leave a company they’re yours forever. But we are a private company and so they added an attachment saying that vested shares will only be yours for 12 months after your departure and then will be forfeited to the company (unless an IPO or liquidity event occurs before then, which it won’t). I also cannot sell the RSUs on any private market.
So now I’m not getting the buy back AND they’re forcing me to give up vested equity due to my exit. HR has advised me that I should sign the new RSU agreement in any case because if I don’t then all my shares are forfeited anyways. But what’s the point if they’re taking the shares away from me in a year?
I got the contract today and reviewed it and all the numbers are the same as the options agreement I got when hired. The only weird bit is that its backdated to when I started but that could be totally normal, idk.
Basically I’m pissed I won’t see any money out of this like my friends, and I’m honestly not sure if I should go get a lawyer to review the contract. This company has multiple lawsuits from ex-employees going on, and they’re known to do tons of shady/illegal shit. Part of me wants to wash my hands of it all and not sign the document, then leave for my new job knowing I have no ties. I’m not in need of this money in any way, its was just a surprise perk that I saw my friends get that I was hopeful I’d get myself too.
Has anyone else had this happen to them before? Or am I just whining about Silicon Valley monopoly money?